Sweet and Sour Pot Roast

There are two truths about pot roast.

First, it’s not glamorous or gorgeous.

Second, it is delicious and satisfying.

So, with that in mind, please remember that the photo may not be an artist’s dream, but the food in it is always devoured because the recipe is big winner. And, while pot roast is ideal when the weather is cold or dreary, it’s so satisfying that it will do in just about any weather.

Sweet and Sour Pot Roast

• 3-4 tablespoons all purpose flour

• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 3 pound chuck roast

• 4 tablespoons vegetable oil (I use avocado oil)

• 2 medium onions, sliced

• 2 large cloves garlic, chopped

• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

• 1 1-pound 12-ounce can tomatoes (including liquid)

• 1/4 cup brown sugar

• 3 tablespoons cider vinegar

• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (I use vegetarian Worcestershire sauce)

• 4-5 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

• 2-3 medium all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

In a dish, mix the flour with some salt and pepper. Dredge the beef in the flour to coat it on all sides. Pour 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the meat and cook, turning the meat occasionally, for 6-8 minutes, to brown the surface. Remove the meat and set it aside. Add the remaining vegetable oil to the pan. Add the onions, garlic and ginger and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes (and liquid), brown sugar, cider vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. Stir to blend the ingredients. Return the meat to the pan. Add the carrots and potatoes. Cover the pan and place it in the oven. Turn the heat to 275F. Cook for about 3 hours or until the meat is tender.

Makes 6 servings

Pot Pie

Is it too early to think about Thanksgiving?

Not for me. For the first time in a few years — Covid!!!! — I am finally having my old, usual crew for dinner. My family plus my brother and sister-in-law, their kids and one grand.

HURRAH!!!

So, I am already planning the menu and doing what I can ahead.

With all those people at the feast there may not be any leftover turkey this year. But just in case — I’ll use the meat for pot pie.

I make pot pie a lot because with only Ed and me for dinner most nights, there are leftovers all the time and pot pie is one of Ed’s favorites.

The recipe below is more or less the one I use. I change the herb, depending on what I have (I’ve used dill, basil, marjoram) and of course the veggies change depending on what’s also leftover or what’s in the fridge produce bin. You need about 3-4 cups of veggies plus the potato and onion.

Sometimes I make this without the meat — just add some more vegetables.

Thanksgiving leftovers? For sure. But why wait? This versatile recipe is an all-year handy one. Bonus: you can freeze pot pie to serve when you want to just pop something in the oven for dinner. Place the dough on top and freeze. Then, thaw and bake.

Pot Pie

• 2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 1 medium Yukon Gold or other Eastern potato

• 2 carrots, sliced 1/4-inch thick

• 2 stalks celery, sliced 1/4-inch thick

• 1 cup bite-size zucchini chunks

• 1 cup corn kernels or peas

• 3 cups bite-size chopped cooked chicken, turkey, beef or veal

• 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 3 cups chicken stock

• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

• 2 teaspoons chopped thyme leaves

• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• pie dough or thawed frozen puff pastry sheets

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, for 2-3 minutes or until softened. Add the potato, carrots and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes. Add the zucchini, corn and chicken and stir to distribute the ingredients evenly. Sprinkle the flour over the ingredients and stir to mix it in completely. Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently to let the flour absorb into the other ingredients. Pour in the stock gradually, stirring constantly. Raise the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the ingredients, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes or until the sauce has thickened. Stir in the parsley and thyme and sprinkle to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon the filling into a baking dish. Cover with the pie dough or puff pastry. Seal the edges to the dish. Cut 2-3 slits in the crust to allow steam to escape. Bake for about 35 minutes or until the crust is crispy and golden brown.

Makes 4 servings

Mashed Potato Pancakes

When I am going through periods of stress in my life, the food I want most is anything made with a potato.

So: these.

Mashed potato pancakes.

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

I’m not Irish but will use any excuse to eat Irish food, which, despite the outcries of surprise from my Irish friends, is quite wonderful (fresh salmon, fabulous oatmeal, spectacular bread and the best potatoes ever).

I’ve been to Ireland a few times and have eaten mashed potato pancakes there, although I’ve never seen them crusted with panko; it’s usually plain old bread crumbs on the outside.

You can use either; I like the texture of panko better.

Mashed potato pancakes are very soft, so be careful when placing them in the pan and turning them.

These make a good side dish, but also a meal if you top them with a fried egg or two.

Mashed Potato Pancakes 

• 3 cups cold mashed potatoes

• 1 large egg

• 2 chopped fresh scallions or 3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

• 1/3 cup bread crumbs

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 1 cup panko or bread crumbs, approximately

• 5-6 tablespoons vegetable oil

Place the mashed potatoes, egg, scallions, 1/3 cup bread crumbs and salt and pepper to taste in  a bowl and mix thoroughly to blend all the ingredients. Shape the mixture into patties about 1/2-inch thick and refrigerate for at least one hour. Place the panko on a dish, then press each patty into the panko to coat both sides. Patties are very soft and fragile, so work carefully. Heat 2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, fry a few of the potato cakes for about 3 minutes per side, or until crispy. Be sure to leave room in the pan with space between each pancake. Repeat with the remaining potato cakes, adding more oil to the pan as needed.

Makes about 12

Grandma Mac and Cheese

All of my grandchildren think that I make the absolute most wonderful, bestest, most delicious mac and cheese. And they expect at least one mac and cheese dinner when they come for a visit.

No worries. I always have one in my freezer, just in case there is ever a surprise knock on my door from one of them.

Of course I thought my grandma made the best mac and cheese too. Hers came out of a box and the cheese part were some granules that came in a separate foil package. She was supposed to mix the granules with milk and butter I think, but she never did. She just opened the package and sprinkled it on top of the cooked elbows. 

That's the way all of us grandchildren thought mac and cheese was supposed to taste. And of course, grandma made it best.

It's the way I made it for my kids. Because that was the best.

Somewhere along the way I tasted actual homemade macaroni and cheese. It was a revelation. It was wonderful. Which is NOT to say that grandma's wasn't good. It was just a whole different dish. I still think of it with fond memories. My daughters think of it with fond memories. And, btw, they also made the packaged kind and sprinkled the dry cheesy granules on top for their children. And their children love that too and probably will have fond memories of that dish.

But when they come to visit me, it's the other kind they expect and love. The from-scratch kind.

They're also pretty clear about how they like it too: moist but not overly sauced, with a combo of American and cheddar cheeses and a crispy top. No added things like tomato or cooked vegetables. No crust -- just maybe some extra grated cheese.

This is the one:

Grandma Macaroni and Cheese

• 1 pound small pasta such as elbows

• 3 tablespoons butter

• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour*

• 3 cups milk (preferably whole milk)

• 14-16 ounces mixed American and cheddar cheeses plus extra for garnish, shredded

• salt to taste

Cook the pasta according to package directions, rinse under cold water, drain and set aside. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, turn the heat to low-medium, add the flour and cook, stirring with a whisk, for 2-3 minutes, but do not let the mixture become brown. Gradually add the milk, stirring with a whisk to keep the sauce smooth. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until the sauce has thickened slightly. Add most of the cheeses, leaving some to top the dish as garnish. Add some salt and continue to whisk the sauce until all the cheese has melted. Add the pasta and mix to coat all the pieces. Eat as is, sprinkled with extra cheese, OR place in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes to crisp the top. 

Makes 6-8 servings

*sometimes, if the sauce seems to be too thin, I use an additional tablespoon of flour

Comforting Pasta Amatriciana

When you feel let down or sad you need to do something special to help cheer yourself up.

Some people shop, some go to a spa for a facial, some exercise like crazy (when my brother was going through a divorce he ran super marathons -- 110 miles!)

To say that the election of 2016 was a disappointment for me is a huge understatement. 

I need cheering up, and my favorite coping mechanism is: eating. Mostly potatoes. So one night I had two baked potatoes for dinner.

But now I need real, actual food, a regular dinner entree. Something more substantial and also comforting. 

Pasta! 

With red sauce. AND smokey with (I use Jack's Gourmet Facon) bacon and (I used Jack's Gourmet Sweet Italian Beef Sausage) sausage. And a little gentle (chili pepper) heat.

Bucatini Amatriciana!

Yum.

Celebration-worthy.

Kosher Pasta Amatriciana

• 4 ounces kosher beef or lamb bacon, chopped
• 3 ounces kosher Italian style sausage, diced
• 2 ounces olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 large clove garlic, chopped
• 3 pounds tomatoes, chopped (or use canned tomatoes)
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 pound cooked bucatini

Cook the bacon in a large saucepan over low-medium heat until lightly crispy. Add the sausage and cook for another 2-3 minutes or until the meats are browned. Remove the meats with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour the olive oil into the pan. Add the onion and cook for 2-3 minutes or until slightly softened. Add the garlic, cook briefly, then add the tomatoes, parsley and red pepper. Return the bacon and sausage to the sauce. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Pour over the pasta, toss and serve. 

 Makes 4 servings

Potato Chips May Save the Day

When I feel stressed I want potatoes.

Any kind.

Baked, boiled, fried, mashed, cakes, salad, pierogi, kugel, soup.

This election is giving me stress.

I know a lot of people who are freaking out. So it's not just me.

But I definitely need some sort of potato to calm me down.

So tonight, when I have people over for my first debate watch gathering, I am serving homemade potato chips. These:

Rosemary and Sea Salt Potato Chips

• 3 medium russet type potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chopped rosemary (or use dried, crushed rosemary)
• sea salt, preferably coarse, freshly ground salt

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Wipe the potato slices dry. Pour the olive oil into a bowl. Add the potato slices and toss them to coat on all sides. Place the potato slices in a single layer on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt. Bake for 15-18 minutes, turning the slices once.  

 Makes 4 servings

The Easiest, Most Comforting Tomato Soup

Last week I was at my daughter Meredith's house and she had just finished cooking tomato soup. The fragrance -- warmth, security, satisfaction -- lingered in my memory into the next day.

I had to have some.

And so I did. I cooked a batch at home.

That enticing smell! I had it right there, in my own kitchen.

It was so easy too.

I separated the soup into packages for freezing, but they didn't last. We ate it all, a soup-plateful before dinner over the course of three evenings.

Now I will make some more.

Tomato Soup

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 28-ounce cans Italian style tomatoes, including juices
• 3 cups vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1/3 cup uncooked white rice

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for about another minute. Add the tomatoes, stock, basil and salt and pepper. Break up the tomatoes coarsely with a wooden spoon. Bring the soup to a simmer, cover the pan and cook for 30 minutes. Add the rice, cover the pan and cook for another 25 minutes. Blend the soup in a blender or with an immersion blender. 

Makes 6-8 servings

Mushroom Barley Soup

The weather fooled me for a while. It was actually in the 60s last weekend. Now it's back to the usual for a January in Connecticut. 19 degrees when I woke up.

That's cold.

That's soup weather. Hearty, nourishing Mushroom Barley soup weather.

My mother-in-law, Pearl Fein, made fabulous Mushroom Barley soup, but I never got her recipe.

Alas.

Then I saw my friend Liz Rueven's recipe. Liz blogs at www.kosherlikeme.com, but she created her recipe for Mushroom Barley soup for The Nosher, where it was voted one of the Top Ten recipes on the site for 2015. 

It inspired me, but I was sans crockpot (mine is somewhere in my basement and I didn't feel like looking for it).

So I thought about what I remember loving in my mother-in-law's soup and what appealed to me about Liz's recipe and I came up with my very own version.

It was awesome. VERY similar to my mother-in-law's, except hers was made with chicken stock, mine with beef stock and water.

Either way, this is going into the "repeat" file.

Mushroom Barley Soup

• 8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 pound chuck, cut into small chunks (or use flanken)
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 3 carrots, sliced 1/2-inch thick
• 3 stalks celery, sliced 1/2-inch thick
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
• 3/4 cup pearled barley
• 4 cups beef or chicken stock
• 4 cups water, approximately
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place the mushrooms in a bowl, cover with hot water and soak for 8-10 minutes or until the caps are soft. Remove and discard the hard, inedible stems, if any, chop the caps and set aside. Heat the vegetable oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the meat and cook, turning the pieces occasionally, for 6-8 minutes or until lightly crispy. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 3 minutes, or until softened. Add the carrots, celery, reserved mushrooms, dill and barley and stir briefly. Pour in the stock and water, add salt and pepper to taste. Bring the soup to a simmer. Cook for about 45 minutes. Add more water if you prefer a thinner soup (or if you refrigerate the soup: the barley will absorb the liquid and soup will be very thick).

Make 8 servings

Baked Potato

What do you eat when you're feeling sad or emotionally wrecked or furious at the world?

I grew up in a family in which, whenever there was a crisis of some sort, the grownups would say "how can you eat at a time like this?!"

But I'm an eater and, in fact, when I am feeling like life is closing in, I want to eat more than ever, fill myself with food and just keep pecking away like a chicken in a barnyard.

People talk about comfort foods. You know, the foods that supposedly make you feel better.

So what is that food, that one thing that I want the most when I'm at a low point? I've thought about it, that's for sure.

Do I want my Mom's Mac n' Cheese?

Actually, I would rather have my Mom, thank you.

Ditto, my Mom's Apple Pie and Chicken Soup.

Popcorn helps, but isn't sustaining.

Ditto Li-Lac chocolate's Butter Crunch. 

Actually, what I want is the very simplest of foods. What helps me most is a plain baked potato.

Russet-Idaho. Organic. Crunchy crusted. Faint metallic taste to the flesh.

This is food so basic and sustaining, so wonderful that, IMHO, it needs just a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Skip the sour cream. No chives. No cheese.

Keep it simple. 

I just ate one. I might have another later.

So easy to make perfectly:

Baked Potato

• 4 organic Idaho, russet type potatoes
• 1/4 cup butter
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Scrub the potatoes. When the oven reaches 400 degrees, place the potatoes in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Pierce each potato with the tip of a sharp knife. Continue to bake for another 45 minutes or until the outside is crusty and the inside is tender (pierce the flesh with the tip of a sharp knife). 

Makes 4 servings

A new day, a new year, a new website

After years and years of always making the same New Year resolutions to go on a diet or exercise more, or to be more organized with my papers, or to keep my car neat and clean, I finally have realized that I am who I am and love to cook and to eat, so giving up “all carbs” or “never eating another bowl of caramel corn” are vows I cannot keep.

I do exercise. More is unnecessary. 

Alas, my sloppy desk is, I am sure, a permanent thing.

Ditto, the car. I eat popcorn in my car. Some of it falls out onto the floor. I drive my grandkids around. They discard grain bar wrappers, banana peels and half-done artwork in the back seat. I don’t always get around to tidying up right away.

So be it.

So this year’s resolution was different. I decided to start a new website. And, thanks to my son-in-law Jesse Hertzberg, here it is!

Today is cold and dreary, dark, and about to snow. It’s stew weather. Any kind of stew. For warmth and comfort and filling up. For my new website? A recipe for Beer Braised Beef (you can call it stew).

This recipe is just the right dish for a day like this, and for some months to come.

You might notice that I don’t use stew meat. I get a large chunk of chuck instead, and cut it into big pieces. That’s because most of the time the packages of stew meat at the supermarket contain pieces that are too small. Stew meat shrinks — if you start with pieces that are too small, you wind up with tough little chewy bits rather than tender succulent, meaty nuggets. Also, chuck is the tastiest cut of beef for stew — I recommend it above any other cut.

Beer Braised Beef

• 6 pounds beef chuck roast

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon paprika

• 1 teaspoon dried herbes de provence

• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

• 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 12-14 ounces beer or ale

• 4-6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

• 6 medium carrots, cut into chunks

• 3-4 tomatoes, cut into chunks

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Cut the chuck into large chunks. Combine the flour, paprika, herbes de provence, garlic powder and salt and pepper in a dish. Coat each piece of meat with the flour mixture. Pour the vegetable oil in a large, deep saute pan over medium heat. Working with a few pieces at a time, cook the flour-coated beef for 6-8 minutes, turning the pieces occasionally, or until crispy on several sides. Return all the meat to the pan. Pour in the beer. Cover the pan. Turn the heat to low. Cook for 1-1/2 hours. Add the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and parsley. Cover the pan. Cook at a bare simmer for another hour or until the meat and vegetables are tender.

Makes 8 servings